Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [73]
‘Your Eminence …’
‘Enter the meeting place. Take these Calvinists with you. Link them with bands and make of your men a living corridor through which they may march to the Petit Châtelet. Save your fellow men from sin, and the souls of these unfortunates for redemption.’
‘Your Eminence.’
Then the doors opened, and the Maréchale saw the speaker.
Even in the uncertain darkness, you could not mistake the scarlet robes of the Cardinal of Lorraine, or the coat of arms on the velvet housings of his mule; or the red velvet hoquetons of the twelve men with torches and hackbuts behind him.
No one in Paris had ever been known to ignore Charles de Guise, brother of the Duke, uncle of the child Queen Mary and, next the King—and, some said, before him—the most powerful man in the kingdom.
As he rode forward the crowd withdrew, weapons dropping. At his sweeping signal the soldiers arrived, hurrying, in their place; picking up the injured and dead and ushering the rest, whole or limping, weeping or silent, back into the Hôtel Bétourné. There, with two of the Cardinal’s servants to help, they were tied, two by two, in a column of degradation together.
The preacher was last, and with him, Claude de Laval and the Maréchale de St André with their servants. Dry-eyed, Marguerite de St André had no need to ask why the Cardinal had singled them out for this special attention. The husband of Claude Laval was nephew to the captured Constable of France, the Cardinal’s most inveterate enemy. The disgrace of Claude was a blow at the Constable, as her disgrace would be the ruin of her husband, also a prisoner. And a triumph for Charles de Guise and his brother.
He had come to gloat. Madame la Maréchale watched him pass through the meeting-house in a sweep of red robes, and caught a glimpse of the fair skin and shallow hat with its long swaying strings. His clothes smelt of incense. He stopped, his very bearing a reprimand, beside her.
‘There are two litters outside the door,’ said the pleasant voice of Francis Crawford from under the Cardinal’s shadowy brim. ‘The pastor and Madame la Comtesse will go in the first, and Madame la Maréchale and her chamber valet in the second. If anyone speaks to you, you hold the curtains closed and you do not reply. Geoffrey and Clément will help you.’
Geoffrey and Clément, she realized, were the velvet-clad bodyguard. One of them turned and smiled, wet-eyed into her eyes. It was Catherine, her own daughter.
And then, almost immediately it seemed, she saw Claude’s started face looking at her from between the blazoned curtains of a splendid litter, its poles picked out in gold and the coat of arms of the house of Guise collaring the nodding plumes of its framework.
It moved off, and another took its place, into which she climbed with her servant. Then, drawing the curtains close, she felt it raised on the shoulders of the Cardinal’s bodyguard. As it crossed the street she heard the voice so like the Cardinal’s behind her, conveying to the murmuring people his blessing. And on top of that, the rumble of many horses’ hooves, arriving from the direction of the Petit Pont and the Châtelet. The procureur du roi and his men, to protect the march of the long train of prisoners.
Jolting, the litter continued. The noise retreated. The running feet of a boy or two and the whine of a beggar pursued them still for a while, and then stopped as one of the bodyguard issued sharp orders. Shortly after that, she and her servant were plunged into darkness as the torches outside were extinguished. The motion continued for a little longer. Then abruptly, the palinquin was set down and the curtains drawn back on cool air and darkness.
‘If any be afflicted,’ said Francis Crawford, ‘let hym praye;